I have previously written about Crass and their involvement in fabricating a recording between Reagan and Thatcher. This Bandcamp profile has even more information about that episode:

“Around then, we started getting classified information from grunts and sailors who were actually in the service… What the hell do you do with classified information?!” Rimbaud recalls. “That is a serious offense! Then, we pulled our greatest trick ever.”

Using the classified information they had received, the band crafted a recording which appeared to be a conversation between Thatcher and Reagan discussing the sinking of The Sheffield and the General Belgrano, ships involved in the Falklands conflict. The band then sent the tapes to the British press anonymously, expecting chaos to ensue. Surely, such a hot item would be a major, stop-the-presses event…

“After we sent it to the press world, it completely disappeared and we heard nothing,” Rimbaud says. “And then four or five months later it appeared in the Pentagon and was described by them as being a KGB operation to undermine American power. They were saying it could lead to World War 3! We could sit here and say we did a tape and now it’s being put forward as this thing, which is very funny in one respect… but it’s not very funny in another. So we were always in this ambiguity.”

Eventually, someone informed the press that the culprits behind the scam were, indeed, Crass. To this day, the band doesn’t know who leaked that info, though by this time, their phones were being tapped by the police and possibly other third-parties. The Observer got in touch with the band, and through a series of negotiations, Rimbaud agreed to admit that they created the tapes… if The Observer published the entire transcript of the tape on its front page. To Rimbaud’s surprise, the paper did indeed publish the entire transcript, which included classified information previously only known to the British government. “Then, the shit really hit the fan,” Rimbaud says. All sorts of people were getting in touch with us, including the KGB.”

There’s more. Read the the whole thing.

About a month ago, Chris Ford made a speech in which he asserted that Russia has a biological weapons program:

In August 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce added to its “Entity List ” of persons and organizations found to be engaged in “activities contrary to U.S. national security and/or foreign policy interests” three institutions “associated with the Russian biological weapons program .” This action highlighted in public for the first time the fact that there is a Russian biological weapons program, and all should take note of this.

Here’s the relevant portion of the Commerce action to which he referred:

The ERC also has reasonable cause to believe that 48th Central Scientific Research Institute, Kirov; 48th Central Scientific Research Institute, Sergiev Posad; and 48th Central Scientific Research Institute, Yekaterinburg are Ministry of Defense facilities associated with the Russian biological weapons program.

The SPND (or Defense Research and Innovation Organization) has been in the news ever since the death of the organization’s founder, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. According to State’s most recent compliance report, the SPND is “an organization subordinate to the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics [MODAFL] that conducts military research and development – on weaponization-relevant dual-use technical activities.” The EU described the SPND somewhat similarly in 2012 and also identified the organization as “part of” MODAFL. The MODAFL association seems relevant to me because President Rouhani recently opined that “the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces’ Logistics will fill this scientist’s place with his colleagues and students with increasing self-sacrifice and efforts.”

Here’s a fuller description from State a few years back:

The Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) is a Tehran-based entity that is primarily responsible for research in the field of nuclear weapons development. SPND was established in February 2011 by the UN-sanctioned individual Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who for many years has managed activities useful in the development of a nuclear explosive device. Fakhrizadeh led such efforts in the late 1990s or early 2000s, under the auspices of the “AMAD Plan, the MODAFL subsidiary Section for Advanced Development Applications and Technologies (SADAT) and Malek Ashtar University of Technology (MUT). In February 2011, Fakhrizadeh left MUT to establish SPND. Fakhrizadeh was designated in UNSCR 1747 (2007) and by the United States in July 2008 for his involvement in Iran’s proscribed WMD activities. SPND took over some of the activities related to Iran’s undeclared nuclear program that had previously been carried out by Iran’s Physics Research Center, the AMAD Plan, MUT, and SADAT.

Iran has issued a couple of recent statements concerning the SPND’s activities. Fro example, this letter to the UN described Fakhrizadeh’s

outstanding role in the development of the first indigenous coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test kit, which is a great contribution to our national efforts in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic…He was also supervising the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

From State’s 2020 CWC compliance report:

The other day, Treasury and State announced that the U.S. has designated two Iranian entities affiliated with what the USG characterizes as a suspected chemical weapons program,

According to Treasury,

Shahid Meisami Group is an organization subordinate to SPND and has been responsible for numerous SPND projects, the cost of which totaled in the millions of U.S. dollars. These projects include testing and producing chemical agents and optimizing them for effectiveness and toxicity for use as incapacitation agents. The United States has longstanding concerns that Iran maintains an undeclared chemical weapons program…

Mehran Babri is the head of Shahid Meisami Group. Prior to his current position at Shahid Meisami Group, Babri worked at Iran’s Defense Chemical Research Lab.

According o State,

The United States is concerned about the regime’s true intent with regard to the testing and production of these so-called chemical incapacitation agents, which could be used either to further oppress Iranian citizens or for offensive purposes.

State’s CWC compliance report from earlier this year had this to say:

A bit old, but worth noting….this 2018 Treasury report has this to say about Pakistan:

Like China and Russia, Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state but there is no U.S. targeted financial sanctions program dedicated to Pakistan for the development and maintenance of its nuclear weapons program. Unlike China and Russia, however, Pakistan is not a party to the NPT and therefore is not recognized under international law as having the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, to include the transfer or acquisition of nuclear technology. As a result, the Pakistani nuclear program has been marked with controversy since its inception, not just in its own right as a state-led program going against the grain of international norms, but also due to the outward proliferation tied to former members of the program in future years. Having to operate outside of regulated international channels has meant that Pakistan has largely had to acquire technology and know-how through covert means, and in select cases, those acting for on behalf of Pakistani government entities have sought to procure U.S.-origin goods and facilitate these illicit transactions by exploiting the U.S. financial system.

Conflict:

Well, sort of. This document, titled “General and Complete Disarmament: Report of the First Committee,” has a slew of links to documents, resolutions, and links to resolutions.

Here’s a random document...an organizational chart from (I think) 1969 of the National Photographic Interpretation Center.